Windows 10 Versions for Gaming

Which one is best overall? I read a lot that 1607 and LTSB are the best in terms of game smoothness. Which one you use or recommend? Im currently on 1903 and 17.7.1 drivers (less frametimes spikes for me compared to 19.5.1 or others more recents from Adrenaline 2019, still not testing enoughs from 18.x.x to compare). I5 3450, 8gb ram, R7 250X 1gb.

 

You dont even have a GPU made for gaming to start with.

Stick with 1903 , remove the bloatware.

Install the latest driver and you are fine.

 

Stick with 1903 and NEVER use that old driver. Always use the latest. 19.5.2 is much better! Also, overclock the CPU/GPU for more performance, it will worth it. I don't have problems with (almost) the same gpu.

 

For what it's worth, I had an old CPU in my last system and driver 17.1.1 gave me way better frame rates in Rocket League than any other version. I'm talking like going from 90fps in Aquadome Freeplay, to over 150fps on 17.1.1.

It seems as though newer drivers are more CPU intensive while 17.1.1 was more GPU focused. I'm sure this is so that there's more GPU headroom and people with newer CPUs won't notice anything different, but for the old Xeon I was using, there was a massive difference between 17.1.1 and 19.x.x

 

For 1903 any of you have the vulnerabilities patches enabled or disabled? See any diference? Also use or not game mode? Im currently on LTSB without any update or patches. Gonna try that 17.1.1 and test fps in some of my games, so far the only 19.x.x that seems to work very good for me is the 19.4.1

 

With 1903 you don't really see performance hit with the patches. Alsó, don't try that's old driver .
Go with 1903+19.6.1, well worth it. The "higher fps" is just a placebo.

 

I can confirm this is true, i have increased fps in overwatch and fortnite while using 17.1.1., fortnite up to 20 fps and overwatch goes as much as 40 fps.

 

Are you cpu limited? Apex legends give 97 fps in lobby, all low (17.1.1) vs 94-95 (19.x.x) i could not find other way to measure performance in that game, maybe training level could work for that?

 

Im gonna trigger someone but with that system i'd use windows 7 if you're into competitive gaming.
Why? Your hardware is built with windows 7 in mind, it will probably work better under windows7.
Also windows 7 has less things to tinker with compared with windows 10 and has less mouse latency.

 

Really? Mmm i guess i only could lose time installing it in my slave drive to be sure xD

 

No, this kind of thinking is wrong on soo many levels. Made for Windows 7 doesn't mean it wasn't in the 10 mind. Exactly the opposite. Also, there are much more functions and things that w10 can utilise from that gpu and windows 7 can't (look wddm)

 

There is no such thing like a "windows 10 version for gaming". But you can always remove useless applications in background, and at least add to defender exception the executable of your games.

Windows 7 desktop compositor is horribly old compared to the one shipped with Windows 10, which means higher presentation latency.
As for the hardware "built with windows 7 in mind", that's untrue.

 

you can turn off the compositor on win7.

That would the only real advantage win7 has over win 10 for gaming, And even so its only 1 extra buffered frame.

 

Turning off the compositor (but I doubt you really can... don't confuse it with the transparancy effects) would mean immediately fall back to 3 buffer bitbtl desktop composition, which is even more slow than the Vista and 7 DWM implementations.
Windows 7 does not offer any technical nor performance advantage over the successor OS versions.

 

the classic theme on win 7 disables the DWM composition entirely, no vsync(this is really the main contributor i assume ), no gpu acceleration (apart from framebuffer), basically the same as winxp or win 2000, its a legacy feature for cards that didn't support WDDM at the time of launch(gma 900 comes to mind).
It is lower latency, but again its only ~1 frame you get back. I wouldn't consider it a very good reason to go back to win7.

http://www.lofibucket.com/articles/dwm_latency.html

 

You cannot disable the frame sync on windowed mode, because the window client area frame is copyed and then composed in the desktop frame. The desktop frame is then sync to the screen v-blank. You can always compose it in a more clever avoiding extra copies like Windows 10 compositor does.

Which means more composition frame time to copy and render because the GPU is faster on handling frame buffers.

Except you need a XPDM driver, while all modern GPUs (~last 15 years) provides WDDM drivers only on Vista and beyond. You could always try to force a XP/2K driver on Windows 7, good luck with that. XPDM support was maintained only for a very small set of legacy and professional graphics adaptors.

It's not lower latency if you must wait more time to render the frame onto desktop. Yes software/XPDM mode takes 1 less copy in the process compared to pre-Windows 10 desktop compositors (which means Vista-7-8-8.1), however the total composition time is slower. All those application tested still uses GDI as backend rendered, which involves an extra copy to the DirectX 11 Windows 10 desktop backend, this is why is slower. Modern games do not use GDI at all, so there are no extra copies involved.

Anyway, if you really care about latency than you play in fullscreen (exclusive or borderless mode depending on games). Exclusive mode works the same on all OS versions, while borderless mode works better (started avoiding extra copies under 8.1) only under Windows 10 compositor: it works like exclusive mode (8.1 doesn't that) except when an external graphics element is composed upon which cause a temporary fall-back to windowed sync mode (but still without extra copies like Vista-7-8).

 

personally use LTSC and its been the best windows I've used.

 

Have you actually ever used the classic theme on windows 7?, moving windows causes screen tearing, and even videos have screen tearing , the desktop it is by no means synced to vblank.


I agree with most of what you are saying, I just dont buy the "reduced compositing time" (was it really that bad? can't imagine it being longer than 1-2ms) as sufficient for compensating the extra frame , since windows 10 uses its pseudo fullscreen mode by default.
Not to mention the "gamedvr" being enabled by default which is a whole other topic.

To be honest, I mainly use a linux desktop, so im not 100% up to speed on the windows side of things.

Makes me want to buy a high-speed camera, just to know for sure.

 

1809 if you want stability (or one of the LTSC versions) and 1903 if you want to gain an edge, but I really think it all comes down to what kind of game(s) you play and driver support.

 

you can move the window, which is a direct GDI frame buffer write with the desktop and have tearing yes, however the frame presented by Direct3D1x/OGL3x/Vulkan/whaevert will be synced to vblank by the API at presentation (thanks to WDDM drivers), which means what GDI writesis already synced in the application logic (ie waiting latency).
Congrats, you have now Windows 10 no-extra copies behaviours (that's true) but with a slower and more resource demanding (aka more performance wasted) - and with tearing - GDI desktop composition, what a nice improvement.

If you want low latency you play at fullscreen mode, and to ensure lower latency when fullscreen is not exclusive but borderless you have to use a recent version of Windows (8.1 or 10). If you want low-latency windowed you have to use a modern version of Windows, end of the story.